Welcome to the CX Coffee Chat brought to you by The Nest. Grab your cup, settle in, and let industry leaders spill their CX beans.
Tim:
I’m your host Tim, Global Business Director at Concentrix and today I’m here with Jonas Hager, Head of Sales and Customer Success at Carvolution. Jonas, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Jonas:
Thanks for having me. First question as always, could you please introduce yourself to the audience? Yes, very happy to do so. As you said, Jonas working at Carvolution, a Swiss startup offering car subscription. I’ve been working here since four and half years.
Actually, I have a background in more the business side. So studied business administration, but always very interested in tech, software, user experience. That’s why also I joined a small software agency after graduating. Then also the business consulting team in that software agency until we got acquired by a big four company. So you can imagine that’s quite an interesting time from a small company to a big four there.
I joined the digital experience consultancy, where I led the UX and design team. So really helping large customers on solving important problems regarding user experience design and how to make their services better. Yeah, and after four and a half year, kind of, I thought I want to join or switch little bit sides before always on agency consulting. Never had my own product I can work with. So then I joined Carvolution being responsible here, as you said, for sales and customer success. So being able to work over a longer period of time on a product, make sure we can continuously improve how our customers and prospects perceive our service.
Tim:
This is an interesting fact already because you’re coming from consultancy, you probably, I would guess you are educated in a very theoretical approach to digital experiences. You know all the concepts, you know what’s important.
And now you are basically thrown four years into, think, Carvolution was founded in 2018, so you joined in 2020 around series A, series B probably. I assume the last four years have rather been turbulent, and it has nothing to do with concept and theory, so how does your past help you?
Jonas:
I think it helps to maybe sometimes take a step back and try to have a look at the big pictures, but as you mentioned, rightfully, it’s kind of as soon as daily business hits your schedule, the whole theoretical approaches are gone. So think that’s also one of the challenges, but also the thing which makes the work really interesting. You have to cover a quite huge range of topics. So at one point, you’re just helping the team picking up phones because maybe somebody’s sick or there’s just a lot of incoming phone calls. And on the other hand, you maybe work together with the management team on scratching out the strategy for the next years, how to secure another funding round or how to improve your business overall. So that’s something which I think it’s something which is really helpful for me personally to have this large spectrum of tasks, but can be also sometimes a little bit challenging, obviously, that you have to switch the context in your head quite from one extreme to the other.
Tim:
I mean, speaking about customer experience and Carvolution, is I mean, working in a very competitive market, car subscription market with different players, with different kind of business models. So I would assume customer experience, customer success is one of the key drivers behind your business model and the one key thing you are focusing on, except revenue, obviously.
Jonas:
I would say it’s a really important aspect. When we will be a little bit just looking at the numbers, I would say, people in the first place, they join you because you have a product offer or you offer a good value for money. So what we have to issue a little bit is that price perception is really the first thing. So they come to you usually for a good bargain or for a good deal, but they only stay if the experience is right and it’s good. And for us as car subscription provider, I often joke about this. If we have a happy client, usually the client doesn’t hear a lot of us because it means everything works well, the car drives, all the tire change work well, there is no accident, no breakdown, so we don’t have a lot of touchpoints during the usage of our product, which is something which is nice, but also is really difficult when, how to give a good impression to the client. So that’s why I think it’s really important that the few touchpoints we have, we manage an excellent. So that’s a little bit the… the advantage and disadvantage of that product we have.
Tim:
And I mean, since you’re basically covering the whole spectrum for now as head of customer success and sales, I assume you are also the main firefighter. So are there, I don’t know, some notable achievements or don’t know, structural components you implemented that you are particularly proud of or something that was just a major pain in the past and you resolved?
Jonas:
So the good thing is, as we now have a certain scale, that it’s not only me, we have the sales team, the customer success team, there is some team leads over there as well who is helping to fight the fire. But when I was starting, yes, actually there was then, you were there where somebody was screaming the loudest. But I think it’s a good thing you mentioned, think. I wouldn’t say there has been a particular thing which I implemented or which I think, that was the most crucial part.
I think the challenge is, as I said, when you grow from series A to a larger company you have to manage at the first month maybe to deliver 10ish cars per month. Now you are at hundreds cars per month. So you have to adapt your structure. At the beginning, we had people, that did consultations or phones with the client. Then they prepared the car, then they delivered themselves, drove to the client to deliver the car. And then also they wrote the… the initial invoice on an Excel sheet by themselves. So this works if you have just a few cars per month. Right now you have the professionalized, you have the sales department, you have operations, you have logistics. All these have to be more and more professional, which also means it has to be better documented. It has to be implemented in all your systems in the background. Before you keep the information you had and if something goes wrong, you’re able to manage because you have all the information, you know the clients. But when you have to have more of this scale and the professional setup, you have to be just better in everything you do because the scale to fail is also bigger.
Tim:
Very good bridge, you have built me. Let’s talk about tech and tools because writing something in an Excel file and coming from… I tried to build my own company in the past. I tried to or more like did it together with my co-founders, but I think translation of processes into tech-led processes was something we really struggled with. So how did you move away from your Excel file invoice?
Jonas:
I would say it’s really, it’s a hard process. And I think that the most important thing is really that you prioritize right. So, as I said, first you begin with kind of a spreadsheet and then we have actually… There’s often this question, make or build, should you do it your own or should you use the off-the-shelf solution? And we choose something in between. So we use an out-of-the-box CRM software where we use to track all our customer interactions. And this works very well. And there we just have to make sure we’re using it right. But for the whole management of our car subscriptions, so durations, invoicing, you can adopt your subscription with us. You change your monthly mileage. You can do all that.
And at the point where at the time we started, there was no off the shelf product for that, obviously because it’s a new business model. So there we had to build something by ourselves. So our IT department had to build the software completely. We started it and then over time, over time it gets more and more complex. So there I think we have really make maximum use of the standard software we use. There’s also this whole AI topic. We can profit there a lot because they’re out of the box solution, which we can use. And we have our core software where we spend a lot of time and development resources to keep up with the business. Yeah, it’s really, really something which I think every founder, every team can relate. There is never enough IT resources to develop things you have on your mind.
Tim:
Yeah, sure. And I mean, just sticking to the AI topic a little bit because obviously that’s a topic everyone is speaking about lately I assume you conduct, I don’t know, pilots internally or whatever. Is there anything you can share already, anything that was astonishing or anything that was just like opening your eyes and okay, this shit is obviously not working.
Jonas:
There was really, I think it’s quite easy when you, I like to have numbers to justify my decisions or see, okay, which direction we go. So you can use this quantitative data where you have a lot of data points. This is rather an easy thing which you can, but we, especially sales, but also customer success, you have a lot of interactions, just a lot of qualitative data, which is really hard to actually get behind on a large scale. I’m not able to listen to all the calls and do transcription. So I would say kind of 18 months ago, I did an intensive market research for myself to see, okay, are there any conversational intelligence tools which could help to capture all these things. And my main issue was, as you know, we are based in Switzerland. Swiss German dialect is not so easy to transcript. So when I did this 18 months ago, I really, I sent to all the provider, talked with, sent an MP3 file of a really dialect heavy conversation and we had it transcribed. And that was really nonsense. So there is nothing you could really get out of the topic. And right now, when you do it right now with our just with our phone software provider, it’s getting really good. Even in Swiss German, you understand kind of what’s the main conversation about, what’s the sentiment. So, I think there for us in Switzerland, understanding Swiss German for AI was really a game-changer. So it really helps when then just open your CRM, you see the summary of the call that your colleague had in your CRM. This was really helpful, something which helps a lot.
Tim:
We’re currently piloting a lot of real-time accent reduction tools, which is also something that we are looking forward to using in the Swiss market. Yeah, in Switzerland it’s really difficult because also the difference between the regions are so big. And the other thing is, which is really we are a small market but still have usually three spoken languages. And we also have a huge expat community in Switzerland. So English is also important language. So, this multi-language topic is really a challenge as well. What I mean, because you are so data-driven and that is something you’ve probably learned in your previous consultancy years that every decision has to be built on the proper data set plus gut feeling. But what are the key metrics and KPIs you track currently in customer success?
Jonas:
We have to have some quite basic KPIs like your NPS score, time to first contact, time to resolution. So that’s something which is really important. When we have in our business model one crucial, I would say, moment of truth, when you have a car return, I don’t know if you ever had, for example, a leasing or when you are on holidays, you have a rental car. When you get the car back, you have to inspect it, see if there’s any damages. And obviously, if there are any damages, you have to pay for it. So this is really for us crucial to understand how people do perceive this. So we do, are also lot of surveys, how happy are they with this step in the process? So we have some surveys we… put along the customer journey to measure certain moments of truth. I don’t believe that we can really measure the absolute how happy the client is, but what we can measure is there are changes, if the client getting happier or unhappier and then see are we going in the right direction or not.
Tim:
Got it. And taking the sales portion of your title, I assume sales for Carvolution is also a digital experience led sales, right? Then putting the right processes in customer journey some place but yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
Jonas:
Yes, I think sales is really digital. We don’t have kind of these fancy showrooms you often see for the old car manufacturers. This is also kind of a deliberate decision that we want to save that money and have a better product instead. But what is also something which for me was an interesting learning when joining is that your car subscription or the car in general is usually the second largest household spending item. So people still don’t feel too comfortable to do it 100 % digital without human interaction. So most of the people they want at least once in their journey, pick up the phone or do a Google Meet or hang out kind of and talk to some real person. They want to see, okay, do they pick up the phone? Can I talk Swiss German to the person on the other end? Do they understand me? So even though we do, I would say digital first and self-service first, but in personal consultation and this kind of relationship with your sales manager is really important. So that’s something which until now it’s still true. So people really like to have this personal interaction.
Tim:
I mean looking at what you’re currently building, and probably your expansion plan, growth plan… so is there anything customer success focused that you’re really looking forward to like a next big project you want to tackle or a next big implementation or a shift?
Jonas:
I think what the car subscription is also a little bit subscription product in general. I think when we acquire a new customer and this is for a car in special I would say after certain periods for us it’s in maximum four years we need to return the car.
So as you know, residual values, values change. So after four years, we have to get back to cars or we can just leave it until 10 years. Then so every four years we have to regain the customer again. So we have to get them a new car, a new subscription. So this was really me means that we have to be invested a lot of time and still are learning a lot. How can we manage this whole lifecycle? Not from first interaction to first contract. But from first interaction to first contract to second to third to fourth contract. So, and given the age of the company, we’re still in this learning circle, how we can this whole continuous customer relationship, make it more sticky, make it better and learn what our clients actually wanted in us for a second core for a third core.
Tim:
Yeah, one thing I wanted to… just go back to because you told me in advance, is your founding story. I think this is, and I think personally and also like looking at an investor at the ecosystem is like companies that try to solve the personal ease are usually most successful in the beginning. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jonas:
Yeah, as I said, it’s a kind of a personal lead. So one of our co-founder, Lea when she graduated and then had her first job, her first regular income, she also needed a new car to commute. And then she was in the market for getting a new car, but actually she didn’t find a solution which suits her needs. So she didn’t want to have buy a new car because a new car really expensive, you just have your first job. So you cannot afford buying a brand new car. Leasing would be an option, but as you all know, when you’re just graduating, you want to see different employees maybe travel again. So you don’t want to have a commitment of three to four years. And then buying a used car, which would be the other option. Sometimes you just don’t feel comfortable in getting a used car. You don’t know, how is the quality, does it break down the moment you pay their first invoice kind of. So she wasn’t satisfied with the option of getting a new car. That’s where she thought, ‘Hey, there has to be a way to make this better’. And she looked a little bit around the globe and there was some first cars subscription provider in the US where she got inspired and then looked for a founder team here in Switzerland to solve her problem for her, but also for the rest of Switzerland, hopefully.
Tim:
You’re currently a team of what is it, 80 people? 80, 90, 75? 75, 80 kind of, yeah. And when you started, I assume it was 15, 20?
Jonas:
I think when they first started, were just a handful, kind of five really.
Tim:
Oh, sorry I meant, when you started four years ago.
Jonas:
Ahh, when I started, yeah, we were around, I would think 20, 20 people. Exactly.
Tim:
So, basically, since during those four years, the company has quadrupled in size. So what are your biggest learnings in setting up, I don’t know, your department and what would you advise to people in your position four years ago?
Jonas:
I think what’s really my learning is to do it more focused on kind of building the big vision, but also then go into detail. I think always remind yourself, you have to be really strong on the details, but never lose the side of the big vision. And sometimes as you’re maybe you’re in the operations, as a firefighting motors, you tend to forget to step about, take a step backward, look at the big pictures. And sometimes you just have to remind yourself, hey, we already went a good journey and we solved a lot of problems, even though you know there are a lot of problems ahead of us, a challenge to overcome, but taking this step back and sometimes just be proud of you and the team and say, hey, now we already manage so much. Obviously, as you know, as startup founder, there will be a lot of challenges ahead, but also have this, yeah, don’t get down because you just have to firefight a lot because yeah, I think that’s something which is really, important. And I think it’s not only important for you yourself, but also take the team with the journey. Not when you hire new people, they don’t have the same experience as you have. So maybe I often show something ‘Hey, look two years ago this process I know is still a bit rocky but two years ago you had to go into PowerPoint to create your own document for clients. Now you just have to enter two values and it is generated for you. So take them with you and see hey, we are moving and you’re moving in the right direction’.
Tim:
Thank you so much Jonas, I mean looking at the time, 20 minute I mean this is a proper Coffee Chat.
So thank you so much for joining us today and thank you all for listening. This was the CX Coffee Chat, we’ll be back soon. Thanks, Jonas!
Jonas:
Thanks Tim and The Nest! Bye.
